There's nothing about the mass extinction that had anything to do with fair or unfair. For that matter, most murder, war, genocide, or other reprehensible acts could easily be dragged under the broad umbrella of unfair.
The droplets of justice dripping from the edges of the umbrella while people cry out injustice but never really do anything to fix it.
For that matter, it's unfair that any child should suffer neglect or abuse. And unfair that malice exists at all.
Of course the worst evils aren't about malice, are they?
Her family hadn't held any true malice for her. Maybe her brother, on his worse days, but even he was merely a person who acted how he thought best. It was only that what came so naturally to him as an individual was to cause her pain.
Malice was not the source of cruelty. Only one of many outlets it could utilize.
The monster currently feasting upon her guts didn't feel any malice towards her either. It was a simple being.
Indifference and ignorance were chief in the recipes for unfairness.
The monster didn't know how hard she worked to be here or how miserable her upbringing had been. It was ignorant of her struggles and of how tragic it was for her life to be cut short.
And beyond that, it was indifferent to those struggles.
She didn't easily forgive indifference and ignorance though. Others might, others could choose to use those words as excuses to explain away blame.
She didn't.
She couldn't.
Cha Siyeon wasn't a kind enough person to forgive those who wronged her. And while she knew that there were larger injustices in the world, surely plenty of deaths far more unfair than her own, she could only live her own experience.
And to her, she felt as though she'd only reached a hand outside of the umbrella of unfairness and touched the cool rain of beyond before she was thrown back inside.
Cha Siyeon died angry and bitter.
–
Battlefields held a unique unreality. The stench of blood, sweat, death, soldiers, and atrocities that ought never to have been committed in a sane world all dragged the senses of an individual down to the terrible reality that all of this was really happening.
But the heightened senses of fear, accepting death, fighting death, regrets, pain, helplessness, and power all clouded the senses with a dreadful sort of focus.
No one lasted very long as a soldier without being able to seperate the reality of the horrors around them from the unreality of doing the job in front of you.
Killing the person in front of you.
It's mindless and strips a person of their individuality, becoming only one aspect of a horde seeking out blood and victory.
No matter how noble the goals of war, there is nothing there for those who grieve the loss of every fallen soldier. There is no room for a heart to care about what are the most important things to any one individual.
The ground is the only companion of the soldier.
Underneath their feet and so long as it's there, their life might be extended by just another moment. The moment the ground begins to shake or their feet are torn from the ground, all the unreality in the world couldn't protect them from the harsh reality of death.
It was fitting that the ground was his final companion. Boots of soldiers rushing past to do their duties, unaware that there was still breath in the soldier that they stomped on in their rush to the enemy.
Others fell beside him, on top of him, around him. Some like him, still holding onto their final breaths in one last testament to their own stubborn refusal to die and some who's life had already long since faded from bloodshot eyes.
He felt that it was strange that he didn't think of these poor bastards as his companions.
Instead his only companion was the ground. Perhaps it was because the ground had been with him his whole life.
The only thing that held any true reality in it. The only thing he could always look down towards and know that it would forever hoist him up. He was real when he saw the ground.
He looked to the ground a lot when he lost things too. He'd watched the ground during his mothers funeral.
Cale Henituse let out his last laugh in a wry and sarcastic way. He died accepting the unacceptable.
–
The sky was always such an expansive thing.
It looked large enough that it could carry wishes onto the wind and grant them with the twinkling of a star or the shadow of a cloud.
Wishes weren't a thing he believed in though, no matter how the sky might tempt the unwary human into divulging their desires for the heavens above. He couldn't say that he'd ever truly believed in wishes but he'd been weak enough to make them plenty of times.
He remembered the day he decided to grant his own wishes.
He'd only been about seven or eight, looking up into the endless sky above, and with a hungry stomach a wish nearly escaped from his lips.
The wind blew gently and he'd closed his eyes and looked away from the endless sky. Instead of the beautiful forever of stars, he saw the grime of a dumpster and it hit him all at once.
He could wish forever for a meal, looking up into the sky for a dream that would never come true. Or he could just roll up his sleeves and search the dumpster.
The certainty of the second option certainly held an appeal to a hungry child.
He didn't go hungry anymore though.
Perhaps that was why he found himself looking up at the sky in his final moments, his broken and battered body refusing to listen to him no matter what he requested of it.
He mindlessly recorded the sky into his memories, the distant sound of his panicked team, the roar of the unranked monster–he wanted to say something to calm them down. To ensure that they made it through this fight like so many others. Without a single casualty and maintaining the peace of a rebuilt society.
He wanted to assure them that he was fine.
Even he knew that would be a lie at this point.
His voice wouldn't come and as his body gradually numbed, he thought that perhaps this was the only appropriate moment for wishes. When the body was too broken to even breathe then wishing for the well-being of his team was all he had left.
The wind gently caressed his cheek as though in comfort and he obediently closed his eyes.
Kim Rok Soo died exhausted and still thinking about how to save those around him, up until his heart stopped.
–
Triplet cries from innocent and small babies resounded in the somber bedroom.
The madame had not survived childbirth and now her triplet children were left to make their first cries of life to the nursemaids and servants, their helpless father falling to his knees as he cried over the lifeless body of their mother.
Count Deruth Henituse wasn't prepared to lose his wife and he wasn't prepared to raise three innocent babies without her.
He could hardly manage the presence of mind to call them my babies. They were just the cacophony of noise that would forever ring in his ears as he remembered the aching loss of the woman he loved.
Plenty of the servants were already experienced parents and so they were able to seamlessly care for the newborn infants as their father wept helplessly.
Cale, Roksu, and Penelope Henituse were born into this world with no mother and a hopeless father.
As Cale blinked open bleary eyes full of tears, his muddled childish brain could not understand any of it. Not the stench of the battlefield still haunting his memories or the sights and sounds around him. He was too small to have object permanence, much less a functional memory. All he knew was that the man with the benign smile who held him was familiar and it made him happy to see him.
So he clung to that man and cried himself to exhaustion while his siblings did much the same.
None of them were prepared for new lives. It wasn't as though their previous lives had gone all that well for them.
Penelope was the first to stop crying on her own as if responding to her, Roksu followed suit. Leaving only the somber silence of Deruth's broken sobs.
Brilliant green eyes locked onto the scene with curious noncomprehension. Somewhere in confused thoughts that scattered like rain, she felt that this too was unfair.
It was a cruel scene that no one would want to remember. Especially not in any great detail.
It was a shame that a panicked servant needed to inform the others about Roksu's growing fever as the baby accidentally recorded the entire incident behind his eyes to be remembered forever.
It was questionable what sort of cruel god would do this to three people who'd only ever attempted to live their lives to the best of their ability.
Perhaps god was just indifferent and ignorant.
Or maybe it didn't care about how mere mortals perceived reality.
The bastard certainly hadn't been attempting to grant anyone's wishes.